I’m taking a break from my Japan series for this post, its not every day that my really close circle of girlfriends get together just to chill and celebrate! My friend B and her husband just bought their first house

If there’s one thing you notice about the Japanese, its their love for sweets. Very much influenced by France and the rest of Europe, their cakes and pastries are based on European techniques but add Japanese flavour profiles. Flavours like:

If you travel around Japan by shinkansen (bullet train) you will soon discover that the Japanese have a fascination with bento boxes. As you enter a shinkansen station, you can see a slew of either omiyage (gift) stores or bento